


Like Real People Do

by AuroraWest



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Ficlet, FrostStrange, Loki (Marvel) Lives, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 22:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21576154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraWest/pseuds/AuroraWest
Summary: Loki isn’t a romantic.
Relationships: Loki & Thor (Marvel), Loki/Stephen Strange
Comments: 13
Kudos: 94





	Like Real People Do

**Author's Note:**

> I was jokingly challenged to write a 500 word fic using the Hozier title generator, and as it's the last week of NaNo, and I'm working on a billion other fics that I want finished in the next six months, I thought, I should obviously use my morning to write this. The title I was given was "Like Real People Do," a song I have never heard.

Loki isn’t a romantic.

He’s always rather been of the belief that you can take your breathless metaphors, your sonnets, your swooning and butterflies, and shove them.

Thor says it’s because he hasn’t met the right person yet; Loki rolls his eyes and informs him that if he has to hear about how Jane’s eyes are the color of the clear blue sea one more time, he’s going to stab someone. Thor, most likely.

And Stephen Strange doesn’t change any of that. Stephen Strange is arrogant, he’s cocky, he’s humiliated Loki on more than one occasion. And he’s _old_. Not by Asgardian standards, obviously. But he’s been alive for just over fifty years. His hair is grayer. The crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes are more pronounced. He’ll live another forty years, probably, but few of them in a state that would inspire anyone to swooning or butterflies.

Still, Loki thinks about him, and hates himself for it.

He finds excuses to go to New York. While he’s there, he finds even more so that a walk will take him down Bleecker Street. _It’s just the neighborhood_ , he tells himself. It’s just New York, a place he’s never been able to decide if he loves or hates.

Every time he does this, he begins one step outside, and ends the step in the foyer of 177a Bleecker Street. Every time, he tells Strange not to do that again. The first time it was a snarl, daggers in his hands, the second time he dispensed with the knives. The third time, he sounded merely angry and the fourth time, Strange said, “Wait, don’t tell me, you don’t want me to ever do that again.”

Is this how real people do this? Neither of them is quite in the realm of normal. And what, exactly, is _this?_ On any given day, Loki isn’t sure if he likes Strange or despises him. The other people in his life think _they_ know. When Strange shows up in New Asgard (there’s a first time for this, and then a fifth, sixth, tenth), Thor smiles at Loki and always, _always_ says, “I’m happy for you, brother.”

Loki, depending on his mood, on how obvious the flash of delight in his eyes is when he notes Strange’s arrival, responds with anything from a sullen, “Shut up,” to, “That’s because you’re a simpleton.”

Thor understands more, maybe, than Loki would like to admit.

When Loki lets his fingers find Strange’s, and intertwine with them, the most poetic thing he thinks is that this is another knot to his life, another snarl in the threads crisscrossing each other. Norns help him.

No. The Norns can’t help him. He doesn’t want their help anyway. He’s Loki of New Asgard, and he makes his own fate. He writes his own story.

That’s kind of romantic, he supposes. His fingers tighten around Strange’s. Come to think of it, Stephen’s eyes are kind of the color of the clear blue sea.


End file.
